The present invention relates to a wear compensator assembly, and more particularly to a wear compensator assembly including a biasing member for exerting a biasing force to urge a rack into engagement with a pinion shaft.
Rack and pinion steering systems may have some type of mechanism for biasing the rack securely against the pinion shaft. One type of biasing mechanism is a wear compensator assembly. The biasing is performed in order to substantially reduce the potential for rattling and other types of noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) created by the steering system. The rattling may arise due to wear in the steering system components. For example, during operation the rack and the pinion shaft may wear, which in turn leads to rattling. The wear compensator assembly is used to bias the rack against the pinion shaft gear.
Some types of wear compensator assemblies tend to include numerous components. For example, one type of wear compensator assembly may include an adjuster plug, separate upper and lower cams, damping grease, a torsion spring, a spring, a compression plate, a nut (with pre-applied adhesive) and pins. Numerous parts may add cost and complexity to the wear compensator assembly. Moreover, a pre-loading operation to load the spring may be required before the wear compensator is assembled to the steering system. The pre-loading operation compresses the spring between the compression plate and a surface of the lower cam.